I’m currently listening to “The Talent Code”, by Daniel Coyle on Audible, and if you’re in the market, even just for a single chapter of a book, Chapter 5 on “primal cues” is an eye opener. The book itself investigates talent: how it develops, why “hotbeds” exist, and what to do to enhance it. With a heavy stress on myelin, and its role in increasing speed of electrical communication between neurons in the brain, Coyle investigates ways to maximize training, acquisition, and performance.
My knowledge of such things is limited, but my interest is deep. Training is training, coaching is coaching, but understanding where talent, and talented performance, come from essentially sets a neurological goal for each task. It is no longer, “Do this over and over until you get it right,” but “Do this with the intention of mastering this piece of the larger puzzle before we move on.” There are so many layers to each instruction, and then just as many to each execution, evaluation, and effortful change, as Coyle notes with many examples. Chapter 5 explained one of these layers explicitly.
Coyle discusses his own children, noting their individual abilities in regards to foot speed. This led to an investigation of both 100 meter dash champions and top NFL running backs. A leap from his own kids running in the backyard, exposed was a correlation between birth order and some of the fastest athletes of all time. Typically, these athletes were late in the birth order in their families. The association, the bridge, was that these humans spent the early portion of their lives “keeping up” with the rest of their family. This provided an increased need for quickness, and a greater length of time developing myelin around neurons sending messages of speed.
In regards to “primal cues”, Coyle refers to those instincts that have been part of human existence since...well human existence. They are the triggers and motivations that have risen with evolution because, those who didn’t possess them or develop them in an appropriate amount of time, didn’t survive. These factors are ones that can produce learning and purposeful practice more naturally. See: the youngest child trying to keep up with his or her older siblings so as not to be left behind.
As an athlete growing up, I never developed that “killer instinct”. I was much more cognitive than carnal. My old high school coach introduced me to the new coach at my alma mater as “maybe the most intellectual player the program has ever had”. Knowing his intending it as a compliment, I also understood how it is exactly what made me a waste of potential, (and also led me into a profession of helping young athletes avoid the same fate).
Within a program and community of abundance, we had two freshman teams and a sophomore team before JV and Varsity merged as one. The first true “trigger” of survival came in year two, cutting from two teams to one. From both playing days and coaching, the “B team” players who made the Sophomore team almost always had a different edge to them. That competitive spirit that you rallied the team around came from the “less talented” players. Was this the result of them having worked harder and improved more? Was it the result of them kicking into “survival mode” thinking the deck was stacked against them? I would venture the same is probably true of athletes in an environment with only a JV and Varsity squad. The compression of the learning curve associated with an activity an athlete is passionate about may be the key to quicker and/or greater success.
All of this is well and good; insight into what may trigger effortful practice and intention of humans for improvement. However, if we aren’t able to apply this to our students, athletes, and ourselves, then we risk being those early humans that didn’t make it, or the younger sibling that wasn’t interested in keeping up...we may simply fall behind. So what do we do? What can we offer? How much can we convince our athletes that Now isn’t the end? How do we hit that trigger for a primal cue in a healthy and supportive way? Listed below are some quick thoughts to reflect upon:
Create eustress in a controlled environment (a feeling of danger in a safe place)
Ex. Fluctuating lineups, awareness of competition
Provide an abundance of opportunity to fail and correct
Ex. Encouraging independent practice time of concepts
(I hesitate on “provide” because if the athlete is truly triggered, he/she will create that time on their own)
”Your survival is someone else’s survival” (create community of mutual reliance)
Ex. Team goals and consequences based on individual achievement
Most of these concepts come naturally to (good) teachers and coaches: find a way to motivate and expose bit-by-bit to stress that can be overcome. We each have our own ways of forging the steel of the next class or generation, and it always requires fire. The example that continues to play in my head is a childhood terror: the basement. Cognitively, there was no monster lurking, waiting for the light to turn off for its opportunity to attack you in whatever distance there was from the switch to the door. However evolutionary primal cues screamed inside us, “Get up the stairs as fast as humanly possible or you won’t make it out alive!” The footspeed, coordination, and confidence to move quickly that came out of that experience may have created some incredible athletes...if only we can harness that and use it for purposeful improvement.
Stay scared friends,
Own Your I
Follow up research:
“The Talent Code” Daniel Coyle
“The Culture Code” Daniel Coyle
Martin Eisenstadt - clinical psychologist, parental-loss
Eustress